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Advantech

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krugtech

krugtech

Industrial
Feb 3, 2010
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Has anyone here had any experience with Advantech? I ordered some motherboards from them and it's been hell. I ordered a motherboard from them over a year ago, tested the hell out of it, found some bugs, worked with their engineers on some bios changes and finally put it out in the field and it works great. So I ordered 4 more, after a month delay they sent 1, after a while they sent the rest and it turns out they're all defective so now it's RMA time...... Has anyone had similar experience? It just seems they're so sluggish when something goes wrong. And more than one thing went wrong and it's been dragging out forever....

Chris Krug Maximum Up-time, Minimum BS
 
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I was going to tell a longish tale to demonstrate the core conundrum that the bottom falls out of the generic motherboard business a couple of times a year, so every vendor you could possibly select is doomed. ... but you clearly already know that story.

... which is why you bought 'industrial' motherboards.
I wasn't aware that Advantech made those. I've been aware of their instrument modules for a long time, and I think I've bought a few and am aware of no issues with them.

Maybe they are reselling generic motherboards as industrial, in which case they are as doomed as any generic vendor. Maybe they are just having teething troubles with a product that's new to them. Either explanation would account for sluggish response. If it continues, one explanation becomes more likely.


Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
 
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Yes, i think they're rebranded. The motherboard that i selected is pretty nice, I hope it's just teething pains. They promised me at least 5 years before it goes end of life which is good. The last mobo I used went EOL and screwed up my whole program. Thanks for your input. I'll see it through and go from there.

Chris Krug Maximum Up-time, Minimum BS
 
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Here's what really ticked me off. The first board I ordered from them worked fine. The next 4 had issues, after a little bit of a struggle I convinced them that there's issues with the boards. They finally acted and found there was a timing problem with one of the chips on the board, the chips timing could be enhanced by adding an oscillator to the board. So I have this vision in my head of then having to find a place for this oscillator on the board and wondering how hacked the finished product would look. So I looked at one of the boards and WTF! there's an empty place right next to the chip for an oscillator! I looked at the reference sheet and guess what.... the board in their advertisements had the oscillator! I don't remember if my original board has one but I'm betting it does and I will check when I go by that customer again. To make a long story short, someone I guess decided to save some money and leave the oscillator off. That jackass maybe saved $5.00 on each board. I would have given him the 5 dollars, this sh** set my project back months. Those 4 boards were ordered on 4-22-11. I still have no working boards in my hand. I RMA'd them a while back and the RMA status says they were received and that's it. Advantech, please fix my boards and send them back before this project goes flatline.

Chris Krug Maximum Up-time, Minimum BS
 
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I feel your pain.

A long time ago, I led part of a project that involved an embedded PC.
Here is what I learned.
<boring story> <somewhat abbreviated>
We needed a motherboard. Generic/commodity motherboards were available at very attractive prices. Management would not hear of using 'industrial' boards because of their higher prices.

It turns out that virtually all motherboards start out as reference designs from a chipset vendor, e.g. Intel.

Low-overhead outfits buy the design, artwork, etc., and add and remove features to differentiate their particular version.
Invariably, the work is done by inexpensive self-educated folks who have only a marginal understanding of things like bus timing. ... which they invariably screw up in their efforts to save nickels and be heroes.

In the typical six months that it took for our meticulous EE to measure the chip timing, find all the mistakes, and qualify at least one of a sample of half a dozen different brands of motherboards, the going price for said motherboard would rocket down from $300 to $50, at which time the motherboard vendor could no longer make money on it and would go out of business. ... and we would start the qualifying cycle over again with a whole new set of cutthroat optimistic startup motherboard 'vendors'.

Our core functional requirements could then, and today, be satisfied by an 8088. But the bottom fell out of the market in a year, and in turn we were forced to go to 286, 386, 486, Pentium, etc. ... at which time I was asked to leave for unrelated reasons. I have no idea what they embed now...

</boring story>
I'm guessing that a similar bottom-falling-out cycle may occur in industrial motherboards, too, hopefully with a longer period.


Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
 
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The board I'm using is about as powerful as a Pentium 3 but that's all I need. It's built on a smaller process so it uses little power and despite my best efforts doesn't overheat. It also has PC104 and some other mandatory features. Unfortunately the few mandatory features I need dictate which board I can use.

Chris Krug Maximum Up-time, Minimum BS
 
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We had a similar experience with them a few years ago. It was our own problem for not researching the product and it's longevity. it turned into a warranty nightmare.
 
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I need PC104 for some proprietary interfaces. Which reminds me of another Advantech screwup. I ordered one of their 5.25 motherboards to repair a machine, tried to get it overnighted so i could get this machine back on line. The next day, all I got was an email saying the board was on an "engineering hold" so i canceled the order. About 4 weeks later the board showed up anyway......

Chris Krug Maximum Up-time, Minimum BS
 
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I'm surprised you're having such a time of it. The PC104 is an industrial comp line too. That's depressing.

Keith Cress
kcress -
 
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